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The Old and Uneducated Watch the Most TV

By Catherine Rampell June 26, 2012 6:17 pmJune 26, 2012 6:17 pm

Older Americans and high school dropouts spend the most time watching TV, according to new Labor Department data.

The department recently released its 2011 American Time Use Survey data, a treasure trove of factoids about how Americans spend their days. This time around I pulled out some numbers on TV-watching habits, which show quite a bit of variation by demographics.

On the average day in 2011, men watched 2.99 hours of television, while women watched 2.53. Here are some other statistics, broken down by demographics and weekdays versus weekends and holidays:

Source: American Time Use Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Children may be stereotyped as rotting their brains with too much TV, but actually the time spent in front of the tube generally rose steadily with age. (Unfortunately, there’s no category for Hulu-watching or other TV substitutes in this survey.)

Additionally, the less educated you are, the more TV you watched on the average day last year. Americans with college degrees spent 1.76 hours watching television on the average weekday, whereas high school dropouts spent an average of 3.78 hours per weekday.

In general, less-educated Americans devoted more time each day to leisure and sports activities than their more educated counterparts, except in a few categories. As education went up, for example, Americans generally spent more time each day reading and playing sports or exercising.

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